. However, the expression OK can now be heard and read almost anywhere. For US President Barack Obama, he has become almost a byword, and British purists began to use it, like David Cameron. Those who have read The Road Cormac McCarthy could notice a series of dialogues between father and son who are completing with OK . [2]
1.2 Abbreviations is the major way of shortening
fashionable use of abbreviation - a kind of society slang - comes and goes in waves, though it is never totally absent. In the present century, however, it has been eclipsed by the emergence of abbreviations in science, technology, and other special fields, such as cricket, baseball, drug trafficking, the armed forces, and the media. The reasons for using abbreviated forms are obvious enough. One is the desire for linguistic economy - the same motivation which makes us want to criticize someone who uses two words where one will do. Succinctness and precision are highly valued, and abbreviations can contribute greatly to a concise style. They also help to convey a sense of social identity: to use an abbreviated form is to be in die know - Part of the social group to which the abbreviation belongs. Computer buffs the world over will be recognized by their fluent talk of ROM and RAM, of DOS and WYSIWYG. You are no buff if you are unable to use such forms, or need to look them up (respectively, read-only memory raquo ;, random-access memory raquo ;, disk operating system raquo ;, and what you see is what you get ). It would only irritate computer-literate colleagues and waste time or space (and thus money) if a computer-literate person pedantically expanded every abbreviated form. And the same applies to those abbreviations which have entered everyday speech. It would be strange indeed to hear someone routinely expanding BBC (the British Broadcasting Corporation), NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization), NASA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), AIDS (acquired immune deficiency syndrome), and all die other common abbreviations of contemporary English. [3] In the process of communication words and word-groups can be shortened. The causes of shortening can be linguistic and extra-linguistic. By extra-linguistic causes changes in the life of people are meant. In Modern English many new abbreviations, acronyms, initials, blends are formed because the tempo of life is increasing and it becomes necessary to give more and more i information in the shortest possible time.are also linguistic causes of abbreviating words and word-groups, such as the demand of rhythm, which is satisfied in English by monosyllabic words. When borrowings from other languages ??are assimilated in English they are shortened. Here we have modification of form on the basis of analogy, eg the Latin borrowing fanaticus is shortened to fan on the analogy with native words: man, pan, tan etc.There are two main types of shortenings: graphical and lexical.Graphical abbreviations are the result of shortening of words and word-groups only in written speech while orally the corresponding full forms are used. They are used for the economy of space and effort in writing.Graphical abbreviations are restricted in use to written speech, occurring only in various kinds of texts, articles, books, advertisements, letters, etc. In reading, many of them are substituted by the words and phrases that they represent, eg Dr. =Doctor, Mr.=mister, Oct.=October, etc .; the abbreviations of Latin and French words and phrases are usually read as their English equivalents. It follows that graphical abbreviations can not be considered new lexical vocabulary units.It is only natural that in the course of language development some graphical abbreviations should gradually penetrate into the sphere of oral intercourse and, as a result, turn into self-contained lexical units used both in oral and written speech. That is the case, for instance, with am [ ei em] - in the morning, before noon; p.m. [ pi: em] - in the afternoon; S.O.S. ['es ou es] (= Save Our Souls) - urgent call for help, etc. 1. Transformations of word-groups into words involve different types of lexical shortening: ellipsis or substantivisation, initial letter or syllable abbreviations (also referred to as acronyms), blendings, etc.Substantivisation consists in dropping of the final nominal member of a frequently used attributive word-group. When such a member of the word-group is dropped as, for example, was the case with a documentary film the remaining adjective takes on the meaning and all the syntactic functions of the noun and thus develops into a new word changing its class membership and becoming homonymous to the existing adjective. It may be illustrated by a number of nouns that appeared in this way, eg an incendiary goes back to an incendiary bomb, the finals to the final examinations, an editorial...
